“Summer Stakeout”
I worked at a big agency when I first started out, and one of the bondsmen I worked with went on a stakeout. He had this old Scooby Doo van that had a mini refrigerator, a little stove, a couch and that was it. No bed, no bathroom, no lights and barely enough room to turn around in. No air conditioner, no fan… just a tiny window at the back of the van.
Very basic. Very uncomfortable. A stakeout is hard enough if you have a luxury vehicle, but this… I guess he figured it would blend in.
He parked just down the street from the house he was staking out. He had a four-day supply of food in the refrigerator, because once the stakeout started, he wouldn’t be able to leave the van. The defendant would have noticed somebody coming or going. There couldn’t be any activity to draw attention. Just an old van parked at the side of the road. No one getting in or out.
The bondsman had a two-way radio with him, and he used it to talk to us back at the office. By the second day of the stakeout, he was talking nonsense. Bored out of his mind, and the heat was getting to him. It was summer in the valley, and the temperature outdoors was 105 degrees. The temperature inside the van could easily have reached 180. He couldn’t open the door, couldn’t go outside even for a moment, and the window was a joke.
That night when it was pitch black outside, one of the other agents snuck up to the back of the van and slipped a bag of ice and a jug of cold water through the window. The bondsman inside poured ice water on the towel and draped it over his head to stay cool.
By the third evening, the fugitive finally showed up at the house. The bondsman saw him go inside, and he radioed back to us and to his girlfriend. The bondsman had a very attractive girlfriend, and the plan was to have her go up to the guy’s front door and pretend to deliver flowers.
His girlfriend showed up, went up to the front door and listened. She heard rustling inside the house, so she quietly radioed the bondsman in the van and told him to get ready.
The fugitive came to the front door but he didn’t open it. He talked to the agent’s girlfriend through the door and told her she had the wrong address. She kept him chatting, distracting him while the agent climbed out of the van and ran across the street.
Even though the front door was closed, the guy must have seen him through the peephole because suddenly everything went quiet. She signaled to the agent that he had moved away from the door. The agent ran through the side yard and saw the guy out back, climbing up a tree. He grabbed him off the tree trunk, tossed him to the ground and handcuffed him.
They rode to the jail in the agent’s girlfriend’s car. He had no desire to get back into the van.
Though he couldn’t stop complaining about the experience, he admitted it was worth the $100,000 he had saved himself by catching the fugitive. It wouldn’t be the last time he used that van for a stakeout.
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